Bookish
by loozy
Summary: Don has never known any space that Charlie occupies to be straightened up. Don, mention of Charlie and others.


**Title:** Bookish  
**Series:** Bookish  
**Universe:** Ulysses  
**Author:** **loozy**  
**Characters:** Don, mention of Charlie  
**Rating:** PG- 13/ K  
**Summary:** Don has never known any space that Charlie occupies to be straightened up.  
**Word Count:** # 152; # 123; # 146; # 158; # 155; # 141; # 108; # 218; # 128; # 149; # 106; # 232; # 102; # 122; # 112; # 175; # 190; # 119; # 152; # 158; # 169; # 104; # 149; # 183; # 112; # 110; # 187; # 186  
**Spoilers:** none  
**Notes:** Inspired by the September -challenge on **hurt_don** and beta'ed by **valeriev84**... I've had this on my drive for a couple of weeks by private life and the crash of my laptop buggered everything up :(  
**Prompt:** # 22 Dimensions; # 30 Secret; # 103 Confessions; # 20 Surface; # 14 Time; # 25 Lessons; # 31 Mix- Up; # 37 Shift; # 99 Fight; # 165 Victim; # 17 In another World; # 4 Learning; # 22 Dimensions; # 38 Discovery; # 197 Hover; # 212 Explosion; # 201 Scrabble; # 173 Bone; # 40 Loss; # 29 Encounter; # 51 Shift; # 31 Defect; # 162 Attack; # 6 Third Person; # 20 Surface; # 44 Taste; # 62 Steam; # 178 Combat  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own any of the characters mentioned in this fic. Numb3rs and everybody associated with it belong to Cheryl Heuton & Nick Fallucci and CBS.  
**Feedback:** Yes, please. I love every kind of review, even the bad ones, as long as they are helpful and constructive.

**Dimensions**

Don has never known any space that Charlie occupies to be tidied up.

It seems as if wherever his little brother settles down to work, he leaves a mess. He just drops his stuff on the closest available surface and then either relocates it later to another surface or just forgets about it.

It is the typical professor- like absent- mindedness that, combined with the messy hair, will always make him either the stereotypical grad student or the stereotypical nutty professor. On his snarkier days, Don thinks that it will probably always be the grad student unless Charlie's face finally starts ageing. He is 35 and still gets confused with some of his own students for crying out loud!

Even though he has tried smartening up his appearance, there are still more than enough freshmen who hit on him, thinking him one of the senior students, not one of the tenured professors.

**Secret**

Now he is sitting in his little brother's big office, slightly envious of the space he has after moving, and wants to scare the beejesus out of him.

Why?

Because Robin is out of town for a consultation and he has nothing better to do. Besides, they closed up a case today and he feels a bit silly and wants to be in his brother's company. Amita is off with Larry for the night, he knows, so Charlie and he could have a brother's night in, something that they have not had in a long time.

If his mother knew what he was thinking right now, missing hanging out with a Charlie every once in a while, she would be so proud.

**Confession**

It has been a stressful day.

Scratch that. It has been a couple of stressful weeks.

They had to solve a stateline- crossing fugitive case which meant that Coop was involved, always a good thing, but the whole thing had taken weeks to be solved. He was good with ensuring cooperation between law enforcement offices, but this had tested his limits.

It was a good thing that he had people around him who knew him well enough to be able to calm him down when he was on the verge of exploding in a from a fit of rage.

But now the perp has been found and put behind bars and everybody was more or less happy. Don wished he could have Robin's warm body beside his in bed tonight, but alas, his brother will have to do. Not in bed, mind you, but as company.

**Surface**

It is already late, nearing ten pm, but Charlie notoriously works late when he knows that he is not expected home or that someone is waiting for him. That is what Don gets for wanting to scare his brother, and he can practically see his mother scolding him like she did when he was a kid.

Back in those days, Charlie was the genius brother that everybody paid attention to, while he was the one who was destined for jail if his aunts on his mother's side were to be believed.

Not that he had done anything to discourage them from that assumption, pulling pranks whenever they were around. His parents had only been amused while the old spinsters had been incensed.

Charlie had been highly envious of his pranks, had wanted to execute some of them himself, but their aunts had never let him out of their sight, so he had never had the chance.

Poor guy.

**Luck**

Where is Charlie?

Don gets up and takes a stroll around the steadily darkening office.

Maybe he should give him a call. Or maybe not. He is feeling cheeky, so scaring Charlie it is. About time he loses some of that hair, anyways. Haha.

Or maybe that is exhaustion speaking. He has not had a good night's sleep since the case began, so it is all catching up to him.

But seriously, where is Charlie? It is summer break, he should not have to work so late.

He might as well get a nap in while waiting. Even if he is snoozing, he will probably still hear Charlie even approaching the office. His brother is not exactly the most silent walker and would have made a lousy Native American, as Don repeatedly assured him when they were kids while playing Cowboys and Indians.

But if he naps now, he will not be able to sleep later.

**Lessons**

There is nothing of any real interest in Charlie's office that he could read and that would keep him engaged enough to stay awake.

There is nothing he could do with all those books on advanced mathematics and graphics and schemes and whatnot. He does not even attempt to read most of the titles, knowing that while the words mean something to him from having heard them from Charlie often enough, he will not be able to decipher what the book is about anyways.

In the farthest away bookcase, on the lowest shelf, he finally finds a book whose title he understands without having to whip out his dictionary.

_Discrete Mathematics with Applications_.

It is good enough to leaf through, anyways.

He switches the light by the couch on and settles in for a read. Or peruse. Something to occupy him.

**Mix- Up**

The sound of the door opening rouses him from the sleep he actually slipped into.

The book must not have been that good at all, and given that he cannot remember actually opening it, he must have dropped off on Charlie's couch quicker than he thought possible or something. His mind is too muddled still to come up with a good metaphor.

There are multiple footsteps and hushed voices

Charlie must have someone with him, probably one of his grad students who seem to live in the building just like he and Amita do.

Only, as the sleepy haze quickly clears, he cannot recognize any of the voices.

**Shift**

Everything happens so fast that he can barely react.

One moment he is getting up from the couch to greet whoever is about to walk in when the overhead light is switched on. His eyes are blinded for a moment from the sudden change in illumination.

He turns his head to the side, putting his hand up to shield his face.

It is enough of a distraction for a group of men to storm into the office and to just charge at him, toppling him to the floor. Before he can react or say something, there is the harsh kick of a boot into his ribs that steals his breath and leaves him nearly vomiting on the floor of Charlie's office.

It is a new office, still, he is hazily reminded when the scent of freshly polished wood reaches his nose, and his stomach turns one more time.

The overhead light has been switched off again, as has the lamp by the couch.

He can see nothing, the legs of the people surrounding him blocking his view.

There is a whoosh of air and he feels the heel of another shoe connect with his back, and he cringes, moans in pain and wishes he had the air to say something when another kick is delivered to his ribs.

**Fight**

This is not the first time he has received a beating, and it probably will not be the last until he snatches a desk job, which he plans to do as soon as Robin has had their first child.

He wants their first child to be a girl, simply because he wants one. He knows that Robin would not really care because all she wishes is for the child to be healthy, and he does, too, but a girl?

That would be awesome.

He would decorate the baby's room with funny comic themes or something, or maybe just a different colour on every wall to brighten everything up.

Maybe if he thinks hard enough about the child, or about conceiving the child with Robin, the pain will stop.

**Victim**

There are more kicks to his back. They are placed just atop his kidneys and the pain is excruciating.

There are more kicks to his ribs and stomach. One of them eventually makes him heave and vomit on the shoes of his attackers.

There are muted cries of disdain. He hears them as though his ears were stuffed with cotton and he cannot make them out clearly.

There are hits delivered by something hard and solid that he cannot identify. They hit his hands and legs mostly.

And then there are the hits and kicks to his head that make it swim and the world drift around him in a cycle that brings up more vomit. He can taste blood in his mouth and he is pretty sure, as sure as he can be at this moment, that not all of that blood is from having bitten his tongue.

**In another World**

No- one can later say how long the beating actually took.

All Don knows is that unconsciousness never took him, that he was somewhat awake through it all. Time was stretched and that he cannot recall any details.

Everything happens as though seen through a bloody screen, which is quite fitting since there is actually blood running into his eyes when he tries to blink. The feet and hands are blurs to him; misshapen objects that make his body ache all over at the mere memory of them.

To Don, it feels as if it was hours.

Estimations are of about five minutes of attack time.

**Learning**

There is only one moment that he can recall coherently.

At some point, he was brought up to his knees by his hair, and should that not have been the first indication that he was not who he was thought to be? Charlie's hair curls so differently than his, but then again, he has let it grow in the last couple of months, maybe that was the reason.

He blinks and the blood clears from his gaze for a moment.

There is one tall person looming over him, dressed all in black, holding a book.

How Don can see this despite the lack of light?

There are lights just outside Charlie's office and the tome from his brother's desk is familiar. He does not remember the title of it, but when Charlie first got it, he was so excited to finally get his hands on this sought- after book that he actually lugged it to the FBI- office to show it to Don knowing his brother was swamped with work and would appreciate the distraction. A distraction that Charlie willingly provided by giving Don the opportunity to rag on him a little, tease him about the weight of the book and his own size and everything, anything to take the pressure off his brother's shoulder even only for a couple of moments.

They could not have picked a worse book for this.

**Dimensions**

He remembers that he moaned in distress which set his attackers off into laughter that sounded quite cruel, and also as if it was staged to be cruel, like in a bad film.

They mistook his moan of distress, though. The book was the source, this particular book, not the fact that it was clearly headed for a body part of his, probably his head.

The person standing over him grabbed his head and forced it back and Don mentally berated those idiots for not noticing that he is the wrong guy.

Not that he would ever wish this on Charlie. Never.

**Discovery**

Most likely they are students of Charlie's, from what he can discern by what he heard. He, in their opinion, must have done something terrible, like failed them. He knows Charlie can be demanding, and that the standard in his classes is high, but he is fair.

So those guys just must have not applied themselves properly.

But it is not like he can actually tell them this. His mouth hurts, and from the way the blood is trickling out his mouth has lost a couple of teeth.

Brilliant.

He has gone throughout his whole career without losing a tooth, but now this. And he is not even on duty.

There might be a certain irony here, but he cannot see it.

**Hover**

The thoughts of teeth and his mouth hurting are gone the moment he can see the book coming towards his head and he wants to brace himself for the impact, only there is no leverage that he can use.

He knows that this might just kill him. The angle is right, he does not need to know Charlie's math to know this. It is experience.

Fuck.

This is going to hurt. A lot. He might die right now from this.

The thought terrifies him and puts up a struggle in the split second that he has, valiant as it is.

And then the book stops, a hair's breath away from his face.

**Explosion**

"That's not Eppes!"

"Fuck!"

"What d'ya mean that's not Eppes? It's his fuckin' office!"

"I know that, moron. But that's not Eppes!"

"The hair's all wrong, too!"

"You only just noticing that now or what?"

"I'm sorry, I just got caught up in the moment!"

"Fuckin' idiot! Dumbass!"

"Trust a woman to screw everything up!"

"Hey!"

"If you would've noticed it earlier..."

"Don't go blamin' me! That was your fuckin' idea anyways!"

"Just brilliant."

"Yeah, well, the profile looked the same."

"Fuck, that's Eppes' brother!"

"Fuck, no. The fed?"

"Yeah. I can feel his badge and gun."

"This just keeps getting better and better."

"What'cha goin' to do?"

"Hey, it's not like I'm all alone here. You were with me."

"Man, fuck, we could go to jail for this. Fuck!"

"Will you stop sayin' 'fuck'? This ain't a Tarantino- movie."

"Let's just leave now. He probably doesn't know who we are."

"Man, he's a fed. We'll go to jail if we get caught."

"Well, we'll just have to make sure we won't, won't we?"

**Scrabble**

This all happens over Don's head, and he is not paying it any particular attention. He realizes that they have by now figured out that they just beat up the wrong guy and if he had the breath, he would have laughed.

As it is, he settles for coughing out some of the blood in his mouth.

Even if they had attacked Charlie, it would not have made a difference, he would have taken care of that, and he would have had the support of several other national agencies backing him.

He would love to participate in the conversation, telling them in gory detail what is going to happen to them in jail. They might act and kick like they are made of hard stuff, but they would not survive in prison for the duration of the term which would be a long one if he survives this ordeal, and they are going to die anyway if he dies, too.

There is a certain justice to this, but he could care less about it. He would

All he cares about is the book that is making its way towards his head again.

**Bone**

Darkness.

He tries to blink but his eyelids feel too heavy and his brain cannot process the demand anyway. The mere process of catching a breath is too demanding at this moment.

Well, Mick Jagger once said that you cannot always get what you want, and breathing is alright with him right now anyways. He does not really need to see what is going on around him anyways.

Taking a breath taxes his body and he can feel himself slipping away again. He can practically feel his ribs gyrating against each other inside his body, broken pieces maybe making their way towards his lungs, ready to pierce them, and he does not try to ward off the encroaching unconsciousness.

**Loss**

Darkness again.

This time, his eyes obey the command, or at least one of them does. He can mutely hear his breaths come out in short pained gasps. Breathing hurts still a great deal and he know he will not be able to stay awake for long this time, either.

There was someone that he wanted to come. Someone that he was waiting for.

Where is he anyways? His one eye does not provide him with a lot of information, all he can make out is a block right in front of his face. Maybe it is something he can use to call for help?

He is not so sure as to what is going on at the moment, but he knows that he cannot stay alone, that it might be dangerous from the way his ribs feel. From the way his whole body feels.

He follows the siren song of unconsciousness.

**Encounter**

When Charlie finds him, he is lying in the middle of the office in a puddle of blood, body twisted in a way that nearly makes him puke, hand reaching towards one of the volumes of his first edition Soviet mathematics encyclopaedias (in English translation) which has blood on it, too.

He just stands there for too long a time in his opinion, unable to tear his gaze away from the form of his brother, the blood coating every inch of his face, still trickling out of his mouth onto the floor.

Randomly he thinks that just early this week he had the floors waxed for the beginning of the winter term.

He is frozen and his brain tells him that this is not a good thing, that it cannot be good for Don to remain like this, that he has to move.

But he cannot move. Not right now.

Give him one more second.

Or maybe ten.

**Shift**

It takes twenty seconds for Charlie to get a move on, to skid to a falling halt beside his brother, get his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and dial 911 while frantically searching for a pulse.

He just about manages to relay to the operator where he is and what has happened and hear that an ambulance is on its way before he hangs up and dials David's number. The other man does not say anything as he rambles on, only interrupting when Charlie starts repeating himself.

He has trouble finding a pulse; his fingers keep slipping off the neck in the blood coating it. He finally puts the phone down beside Don in the blood and switches the speaker on.

Vaguely he listens to David tell him that he is on his way right now and that Colby, Liz and Nikki are coming, too, when he finally finds a pulse.

It is low, too low and he keeps his fingers there for fear of losing it.

**Defect**

The overhead light casts weird shadows on Don's face, the half that is not turned towards the floor, and Charlie finally gives in to the urge and lets the tears run down his face. He did not cry when Don was stabbed, but then he had not seen Don actually hurt.

Now he is here with him, keeping contact with his brother, hand not moving from the neck, counting down the seconds until the EMTs should arrive. He thinks of calling Dad, but he does not have the energy.

Every fibre of his being is focussed on Don.

And then he loses the pulse.

**Attack**

He has never reacted that quickly, and there is something to be said about rationality in the midst of absolute panic.

Methodically he rolls Don onto his back, rips his shirt open, ignore the blood flowing from cuts, tilts his head back, checks for any even minute rising of the chest and bends his ear down to Don's mouth.

Nothing.

A sweep of his fingers in his brother's mouth reveals a lot of blood that is probably clotting the air passages and tilts the head further back. Then he pinches Don's nose closed and proceeds to give him breaths of air, putting oxygen into the lungs. He can see from the bruises on his brother's torso that CPR would probably do more damage than good, so he sticks to mouth to mouth, pausing every few breaths to take in air for himself before returning to the task at hand.

**Third Person**

Five minutes after his call, EMTs are coming into the office and take over, possibly destroying evidence that might lead David and his team to discovering who the attackers are, but right now?

Charlie does not give a flying fuck.

All he wants is his brother breathing.

The EMTs have him moved onto a stretcher quickly, and are intubating him just as David, Nikki, Liz and Colby storm into the office, other FBI- agents behind them.

They all stop short, aghast, shock written plainly on their faces.

Charlie watches everything as if from a different point of view. He can see himself huddling close to Don, the legs of his jeans soaked in blood by now, telling David everything that he knows. He can see the EMTs getting up to rush out the building, the agents making room for them.

He follows them, can see himself disappearing and knows that in this moment he lost something of himself in this puddle of blood that he can still see when he comes back to himself and runs along with the stretcher, Colby beside him.

**Surface**

Don survives.

Barely.

He is in a medically induced coma for four days, the swelling in his brain pressing into his skull. The injuries his body received are too severe for him to endure when conscious and because the doctors are not sure of how his brain will react to medication the state it is in, they cannot give him pain relievers.

So they put him under.

On the fifth day, he comes slowly back to himself, the change in brain pattern the only thing making the rise to consciousness obvious. He manages to blink at Robin before being pulled under again, this time by the pain radiating through his entire body.

**Taste**

They find the guys.

Don managed to scrape two of them, and hair was found in the blood. They cave quickly and beg and cry for their mommies and daddies, but find no mercy in the FBI- agents.

Assault of a federal officer.

David smirks, an evil glint in his eyes.

Have fun in prison.

The main guy actually manages to sneer, a moment of supposed bravery that is actually stupidity, tells David and Robin, who insisted on being in the room with them, that in prison they might welcome guys like them.

After all, they beat up Don Eppes.

That has got to have some pull in prison, right?

**Steam**

David has never seen Robin lose her cool that quickly, or shout that loudly in the interrogation room where she is the AUSA until her colleague comes.

After that, there are no more smart or witty remarks, just five sophomore students who failed Charlie's class quivering in their seats.

With Robin as their prosecutor, they would screwed. She would tear them apart, make mince meat out of them and then have them for breakfast, because Robin is especially vicious early in the morning. If she has not had her required three cups of coffee, do not even think about coming close to her.

Her colleagues are pretty much the same, even though Don claims that she has a special brand of viciousness that is nice. David thinks that Don's hidden kinky side came out to play when his boss made that statement.

Anyways.

The boys are goners… That is a given, but it would have been so much nicer had Robin been the one to deliver the killing blow. Alas, one of her colleagues do that, and David and the team will do their damnest to help.

**Combat**

Don's road to recovery is a long one.

The damage done to his head is reversible, but it takes time. He suffers from mild aphasia in the beginning, and even though he is catching on quicker and quicker with every day, it is frustrating to him, and probably those surrounding him, too, though they don't show it.

His hand coordination is off, tendons and nerves were damaged and it takes microscopic surgery to repair the tears.

It takes a lot of patience, calm and reassurance. More often than not, he wants to throw in the towel, he shouts and yells and then clams up completely when he realizes that what he is actually saying is not what his brain told his mouth to. So then he decides to not talk at all, but then encounters the combined stubbornness of his family and team which is even bigger than his, and they prove to be an obstacle that he cannot avoid.

Which is a good thing, because without them, he would not have gotten back to where he was before deciding to play a prank on Charlie.


End file.
